My Exogenous Rules
Culture
It doesn't take much browsing of (non-5e) tabletop roleplaying hobby spaces online to see that much of the conversation on games is centred around rules, how to use them, the differences in rules between one game on another, System Matters, and so on.
I think Elmcat speaks for many of us - particularly in regard to the frustration often felt when discussing the tabletop roleplaying hobby online - with the excellent post 'Cultures, not games'. I won't reiterate Elmcat's points, except to say that I agree with the spirit and argument of the post. Whatever your feelings on 'Six Cultures of Play', it is at worst a useful starting point to understanding the broad categories of RPG play-style existing within the hobby, even if it paints some cultures with a broad brush.
Frames
Sam Sorensen's work foregrounds "Frame Theory" as a means of analysing and understanding several distinct levels at which the rules of our games exist while we engage in play. I wont repeat the fundamentals here, you can find a great explanation in his post 'Which Rules Elide'.
Viewed through the lens of Frame Theory, the "cultures of play" at any given table (or for any given player) are primarily experienced as a bundle of the Exogenous Rules which influence our play, though it is often the case - especially in storygame and PbtA style design - that a designer will attempt to encode their play culture in the Endogenous Rules of their game's text (rulebook, player sheets, handouts, whatever).
When I put on my OSR hat and strive to run my TRPG campaigns in line with the principles espoused in Cairn, the guidance of the Warden’s Operation Manual, the abdundant advice of the blogosphere, or whatever insight might be gleaned from ancient texts of the TSR era - carrying these things with me from game to game - I am part of the OSR culture of play and I am constructing for myself a set of Endogenous Rules.
so what is the OSR?
Merely stating that we are playing within one of the “six cultures of play” does not fully account for all the myriad ways in which the "rules" of your endogenous frame are shaping play at your table.
- Do you do handouts?
- Do you run games online, or around a kitchen table, or at a local club, or in a pub?
- If you're online, what digital tools are you using? Is your camera on? How do you watch for player safety? How long do your sessions run for, and how often?
- Are we playing on a weekend or a lunchbreak?
- If a player can't show up do you run the session without them?
- Do you and your players practice Close or Distant roleplay or (like me) some blend thereof?
- Do you use minis and a grid?
- How much do your players co-create the world with you before or during the campaign?
- Do you use physical notebooks for your prep or software like Obsidian?
- How socially diverse is your play group?
- How long have you known your players, and where from?
All these elements of the Exogenous Frame add up to a huge impact on the shape of our experience of play.
In running an OSR game or a storygame I am striving towards particular principles, my rulings and narration weighted towards particular goals for play, and I am providing information and preparing my campaign in certain ways; but me declaring that I have tied the flag of either culture to my Referee-Facilitator mast does not amount to a full and honest accounting of my Exogenous Rules.
My Exogenous Rules (an imperfect accounting)
- Whether you call the role "referee", or "games master", or "DM", or "facilitator", the most important part of the role is to be a good host. I see the players as my guests, with all the responsibilities and expectations that implies.
- Sean McCoy's page 'On Hospitality' from Warden's Operation Manual. It's a pitch-perfect summary of player safety and care.
- I am a (relatively new) parent in full time employment, closer to 40 than 35 years old, and both my privileged ability to enjoy leisure activities in the ways I do and the constraints my responsibilities place upon my leisure time are defined by these facts.
- My main player group is majority LGBTQ+ -- bigots can eat shit, trans rights are human rights.
- Strive to play each game (and adventure) in the sprit of its principles, the fictional world it describes or implies through its rules, and follow the rules until or unless we find they aren't needed. Adhering to this requires that I preference games with fewer rules of greater impact on play (e.g. Mothership, Mythic Bastionland, Action Movie World, Troika).
- My regular campaign play is online, carried out via private Discord server:
- within the session I play with my camera on, this is not mandatory for my players but is welcomed.
- Miro boards act as our virtual tabletop (VTT). This Miro "VTT" contains everyone's character sheets, visual aids such as maps and handouts, rules references, and the software permits players to draw their own maps and take their own notes together. For the purpose of simulating play at a table, I much prefer this "single pane of glass" perspective to the CRPG style interface of a Roll20 or Foundry VTT.
- the X-card safety tool can be sent to me via private/direct Discord message, if the player prefer. Thankfully we've never had to use it (knock on wood).
- Introducing a new player to the group requires the consent of all current members. We prioritise the comfort, safety and wellbeing of the players we already have ahead of adding someone new; any objection for any reason (stated or unstated) and the new player won't join or continue.
- We play on a fixed schedule (with a few exceptions: e.g. my wedding anniversary) at a fixed and predictable time slot.
- If a player can't make it we continue without them.
- The session allows for 3 hours of play with a break in the middle, and sometimes we hang around in the call afterwards to chat.
- The session begins with a casual chat among friends, and play begins with a brief recap of vital information (we can lean on the Miro board to act as collective memory), then I describe the situation the player-characters find themselves in presently, and then they take the lead.
- After each session, I write a play report for myself; reviewing what happened, what impactful choices the players made within the fictional world and how those carry forward, as well as summarising what worked and what could be done differently or better for next session.
- Prep work and session notes are primarily written in a (dotgrid) notebook, using pen and pencil.
- The campaign begins with players making their characters together, and an open round-table conversation about our goals and vision for the campaign.
- if permitted by the rules, characters are always rolled randomly "3d6 down the line" (or "2d10+25 down the line", whatever...)
- Strive for the ICI Doctrine. Always tell players what their character could percieve or know within the world. Answer good questions with good information.
- Try to ensure consequences for failure and terms of success are spelled out and agreed before we roll dice. This is a rule I sometimes fail to live up to, due to an instinct to sustain the momentum of play and make authorial decisions ingrained in me from playing in trad-style RPG culture campaigns.
The 'System Matters' Addendum
Having typed out all the above, I'm struck by a realisation: my view on roleplaying games has changed, somewhere along the line...
If the "system" in your "system matters" is limited to just the Endogenous Rules that are in play then it really doesn't... or it does matter but not as much as I once thought.
Including the Diegetic Frame in the "system" means it matters more (being a brave little mouse in big person's world within the diegesis of Mausritter play is where most of that game's magic lives, even if the pretty art and "inventory tetris" draws you in and sells the product), but the impact of the exogenous frame often appears under-examined (or underrated) to me, across a lot of the RPG theory and discourse spaces I've frequented.
Much as I would intensely dislike the play experience argued for in the "4D Handbook", I think the people behind that particular subculture and playstyle are onto something... kinda. Bolting a load of endogenous rules to govern how people are supposed to talk at the table onto 5e (or Traveller) will - in my opinion - make a bigger experiential difference to play than having that same group switch to the endogenous rules offered by Pathfinder (or GURPS Traveller).
None of which is to say that designers should stop designing. Providing purposeful and effective endogenous rules, providing the means to help a group construct a stronger diegesis at their table... such acts of creation enrich the hobby for the rest of us, bringing novel experiences to our game tables. Good design gives us diegetic and endogenous components for our games which the players at the table could not have created alone.
When I peer over the parapet of my discord and blogosphere bubble and into the frighteningly large expanse of youtube content, I see a world where the "trad"/"neotrad" cultures of play (as labelled in Six Cultures) aren't especially worried about what ideas come from where, they aren't especially worried about RPG Theory, they're not always as trad/neo-trad as they might appear to us from a distance and likely wouldn't recognise themselves as such, and because they're primarily talking about D&D (as folk hobby) they're talking about play more than they talk about rules or games.
Ginny Di's recent video about different styles of Dungeon Master is a particularly illuminating view into how many in the broad D&D world see and understand their own play cultures, on their own terms. They might not know Mythic Bastionland but they know what a "sandbox" is. Viewed through the lens of Frame Theory, some of the styles gestured at in Ginny's video are a grab bag of endogenous rules pilfered from multiple sources, or they amount to the imposition of exogenous frame stylistic choices overriding whatever the endogenous rules of 5e are supposed to be doing.
No shit!
Yeah, I get it - much of this won't be new to you.
A lot of it is new to me!
I think there's value in examining one's exogenous frame / exogenous rules, and thinking about how this impacts our game table. Maybe you'd like to do the same, maybe this is old news to you.
Paying the Tax
I posted theory, thank you for reading to the end... here's something gameable:
cat & feline Mien table (for Troika)
- Playful (uh oh!)
- Playful (so cute!)
- Contented
- Aloof
- Wary
- Hungry